Iraqi Oil Workers Movements:

Spaces Of Transformation And Transition

Ewa Jasiewicz

Five years into the war and occupation of Iraq, the US and UK
administrations, international oil companies and occupation-installed
Iraqi elites are labouring hard to open up Iraq’s massive oil reserves to
their long-term investment and control.
Possessing 115b barrels of proven reserves, with possibly twice
this amount undiscovered, Iraq has the second largest reserves on the
planet—approximately 10-20% of the global total. What makes Iraq’s
oil potential more important is that Iraqi oil is amongst the cheapest to
extract ($1.50 per barrel compared to approximately $30 per barrel of
tar-sands extracted hydrocarbons) It has a reserves-to-production
ration triple that of neighbouring Saudi Arabia—a staggering 173
years. The ratio is calculated at current levels of productivity and
demand and the unextracted potential of current producing and
discovered fields. The quality of Basra Sweet Light Crude is also of a
high purity, meaning a less capital and energy intensive refining
process.
Geo-politically, Saudi Arabia as a key ally of the United States has
become increasingly volatile. When Al Qaeda attacked Saudi’s Abqaiq
oil processing facility in 2006, the price of oil leapt by $2 per barrel.
The US pulled out most of its troops and military infrastructure in 2003.
Oil is also more than a strategic commodity in its’ ‘crude’ use-
value sense. Traded in dollars, it also secures the value of the US
Dollar and keeps the US economy financially lubricated, under-writing
the currency with each transaction, compelling national treasuries to
stash reserves of dollars to pay for it—if US and allied governments
and companies control oil supplies that is. If these alliances break

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down, as in the case of Iran which has diversified all of its external
reserves away from the dollar and is trading with oil-dependent (90%
of energy supplies) Japan in Yen, it is the US economy that could be
made to ‘scream’. Securing Iraqi reserves for US companies and allies
to ensure their trade in dollars, has security implications for US
currency and the US economy. How much would a state invest to
secure the future of its’ currency? How do you value currency? Worth
trillions?
Post-invasion Iraq was expected by the US and UK authorities to
represent a more stable and acquiescent petro-state, given the
removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of neo-liberal free-
market and authoritarian legislation beginning with 100 orders passed
by the first pro-consul Paul Bremer in 2003.

Locking-In Neo-liberalism

Bremer’s 100th order locked in and re-legitimised the previously

passed 99 orders. The Iraqi Constitution, which was written in a matter
of weeks under conditions of duress according to some Iraqi law-
makers and under the heavy influence of US Ambassador Zallamy
Khalilizad who circulated US-drafted copies of a model constitution,
also enshrines free-market policies for liberalising the energy sector.
Article 110, frequently quoted by oil executives keen for
privatisation deals, decrees:

the federal government and the governments of the

producing regions and provinces together will draw up the
necessary strategic policies to develop oil and gas wealth to
bring the greatest benefit for the Iraqi people, relying on the
most modern techniques of market principles and
encouraging investment (my Italics).

Opening the door to liberalization of the oil sector in the interests of

foreign investors.
Still off the law-books however, is legislation allowing oil
companies to effectively own Iraqi reserves and secure long-term
investments—the absolute key to raising IOC share price, growing
core-business, and gaining competitive advantage in energy markets.
Through their allied oil companies, the British and US governments
would be able to leverage political and economic influence over
competing economies such as India and China, but also to mitigate the
risk by having the potential to restrain the developmental capacity of a
potentially non-aligned Iraqi government which could be hostile to
Israel, the most important strategic ally of the US in the region.

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History Repeating Itself

This tactic of stunting economic capacity was deployed during the life-
span of the Iraqi Petroleum Company, the consortium of Shell, BP,
Total, and Exxon Mobil which originally signed a concession with the
British-installed monarchy of King Faisal. At the time, Iraq was
occupied under the British mandate, an occupation that became
‘Iraqified’ with a paid off ruling monarchy and elite, enticed and
maintained by oil revenue rents. Meanwhile a restive population
mounted insurrection after insurrection until the monarchy was
deposed by the coup of Abdel Karim Qasm in 1958.
Under Faisal, the IPC deliberately left fields undeveloped in order
to fulfil its own quotas and market agendas and render the Iraqi
government relatively weak. These companies had their 75 year
concessions axed and were eventually booted out of the country under
the nationalisations of the 1970s.
The past thirty years have seen a succession of nationalisations
by governments laying claim to common energy sources, meaning the
International Oil Companies now own approximately 4% of global oil
reserves. For the likes of Shell and BP, Iraq represents a pendulum
swing back in their favour after thirty years of declining influence and
reserves.
The key to transferring ownership of these resources from state
control to International Oil Company control is the ratification of the
Iraqi Oil Law.

The Iraqi Oil Law—Breaking and Entering

A document of seismic political and economic power, its signing would

have global implications for the growth of the global oil industry—
corporate and state—and pave the way for the break-up of Iraq and an
economic empowerment of an already politically and militarily
empowered Iraqi ruling class.
The Oil Law currently on the table was influenced by nine
multinational oil companies, the IMF and the UK and US governments,
all of which saw copies of the original draft within weeks of its
completion. The law has over-run more than five US administration and
IMF deadlines in the past two years, and is currently the top priority for
the Bush administration to pass before Bush and Oil industry partner
Dick Cheney leave office.
The law, if passed in its current form, would create new facts on
the ground by allowing regions to create their own oil industries,

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signaling the dismemberment of the Iraqi National Oil Company and

potentially the creation of a host of new, regionalised oil and gas
companies—private and part state and private owned.
The law establishes an entity known as the Federal Oil and Gas
Council—a 15 member, politically appointed body made up of sectarian
regional representatives which would have ultimate decision-making
power over which contracts were signed, with which companies, on
what terms and for how long.
The sectarian conflict fostered by the US and UK occupation has
already produced new facts on the ground—namely the movement of
millions of internal refugees fleeing sectarian violence and swelling as
well as creating new communities, divided along sectarian lines.
Baghdad is currently divided up into sectarian cantons, sealed by
concrete walls.
The US’s “Awakening Councils”—known as the Sawa movement—
is a network of paid off tribal militias working in the service of US
interests in Iraq. The Sawa councils, located mainly in Anbar province
are being groomed for local government under long-term US
occupation. Incentivisation for separation has been dressed up in the
language of economic and political empowerment, namely the creation
of a separate central so-called ‘Sunni’ state with authority over the
development of its oil and gas reserves, of which there is estimated to
be a considerable amount in the Western desert where the Akkas Gas
Field lies, only a few miles from the Syrian border and currently
targeted for control by Shell.

War Zone, Carbon Comfort Zone

The privatisation of Iraqi energy by both the International Oil

Companies and regional, occupation-supporting and supported elites
represents a win-win situation for the US and UK occupation
authorities. Guaranteed security of supply and stability of contract,
enshrined with treaty status through the Oil Law and protected on the
ground by Iraqi militias, paid by oil revenues, and Private Military
Security Companies—US and British, yet employing local staff, all
backed up by permanent US military bases under the current ‘Status of
Forces’ and ‘Strategic Framework’ deals on the table.
The result could be a triple-lockdown preventing local resistance
rising up against these “facts on the ground” in the making, fracturing
a potential resistance which could have forced a change in government
and provoked a possible abdication from contractual responsibilities
(known as the “obsolescing bargain”—a state claiming of decisive

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power over the use of resources exercised recently by Venezuela and

Bolivia). In this context, Iraq’s oil industry would become highly
militarised, as it has become in Nigeria, Colombia and Saudi Arabia,
protected by concentric circles of concrete and aerial and land
surveillance.
The financial gains to be made through development of oil and
gas reserves risks an entrenched dependency on fossil fuels for the
accumulation of capital and growth at the expense of alternative
energy sources and development. This is a common process known in
the industry as “Dutch Disease,” a form of “putting all ones eggs in
one basket” which renders the economy at high risk of external market
shocks or shifts in the energy market.
The entry and the establishment of IOCs on Iraqi terrain, owning
reserves for three decades, would not just entrench sectarian divisions,
conflict, repression of the population and peoples’ movements, but
with it, the military occupation.
As well as the military occupation, the economic occupation of
fossil fuel resources by corporations, would entrench a reliance on
fossil fuels and both the physical structures and industries they fuel
and rely upon for transformation of the energy into fuels and the
related market structures, commodities and systems it supports.
In short, Iraq can be seen as a major refuelling zone for free-
market corporate capitalism. A war zone but a carbon comfort zone for
the dwindling IOCs which seek ‘energy security’ for their own reserve
tallies and energy fiefdoms.

Iraqi Oil Workers – A New Social Movement

Iraq’s oil industry was the only industry which kept going during the
wars, sanctions and uprisings in Iraq. The prohibitive sanctions regime
imposed and enforced by the United Nations Security Council remained
in place for 13 years. Barely any spare parts, fertilisers and materials
could be imported into the country. Whilst many private sector
companies slowly went bust and public sector key business began to
mechanically fail and become decrepit, the oil sector, despite also
being worn down and partially damaged due to the Iran-Iraq war and
subsequent gulf wars, remained onstream and ongoing.
This consistency meant that oil workers in a mass sector such as
Oil and Gas, kept coming to work and socialising and working with
purpose, whilst many other public sector workers found themselves
still paid and going to work but without any actual meaningful work to

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engage in, no industrial power or sense of personal fulfillment and

usefulness.
The tool of collective bargaining, of strikes to resist oppressive
employers or the government, was absent. In the case of the oil sector,
it was one probably the most repressed and highly surveillanced
industry in the country. Workers talk of union officials carrying guns
and issuing threats against workers in the sector. Your union official
could have you killed. And your boss really was most probably a
fascist. Both in cahoots with one another, the reality of “workplace
organisation” was one of state unions acting as a second line of regime
defence and surveillance, behind the existing lines of security forces
and secret agents.
But repression in the workplace did not impede workers’ sense of
purposefulness, power and responsibility. Oil was and still is the
backbone of the Iraqi economy and oil revenues under the oil for food
programme were literally putting food on tables of Iraqi households up
and down the country. Oil workers were and still are incredibly highly
conscious of their own power and necessity to the economy. This
power was underscored by ‘heroic’ and “mujahedeen”-like (resistance
fighter-like) grassroots reconstruction efforts by workers themselves,
to paraphrase Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions president Hassan Jumaa
Awad.
Workers threw out KBR subcontracted workers and banned
military contractors from worksites in the summer of 2003. They knew
the company represented “Dick Cheney” and “The American
Occupation” and they wanted to retain control of their workplaces and
do the reconstruction necessary themselves.
In the Iraqi Drilling Company alone, 12 drilling rigs were
reconstructed using black market and cannibalised parts from other
equipment to repair rigs which had been damaged and looted following
the 2003 war. Celebrations would be held following the completion of
autonomous reconstruction. Ingenuity, invention and tenacity
flourished under the sanctions.
Management and worker relationships in some sections of the
industry became co-operative and mutually respectful—with workers
themselves—senior technicians and engineers—managing
maintenance and reconstruction processes through and in spite of the
wars and sanctions in a “collective war-effort” approach.
The shared experience by Iraqi oil workers, particularly in the
South, where the bulk of the industry lies and where a major uprising
took place in 1991 has been formative for creating the conditions for a
social movement.

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The Kurdish uprising in ’91 had some success, in terms of an

autonomous zone being created, free-from Ba’ath dictatorship
repression yet under the control of the US authorities and the two main
Kurdish ruling class parties—the Kurdish Democratic Party and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The South on the other hand, suffered a
brutal crackdown and those who fought had to keep their heads down
and carry on, under every more precarious and surveillanced and grief-
heavy conditions.

Shared Resistance

But the shared experience of resistance, repression and economic

responsibility/power, created undercurrents of organised resistance,
unspoken and intuitive relationships between people of a depth that
was sensual in its most intuitive, mentally and spiritually intimate
sense, compounded by religious faith, these unspoken, evident, truths
of collective experience created the conditions for trust, self-
organisation and a unity of purpose and conviction that has resulted in
powerful union organisation which goes beyond workplace issues of
wages, health and safety, compensation and managerial repression
and into the realms of a spiritual quest to guard Iraq’s resources from
tyranny, be it corporate neo-liberal capitalist or dictatorship capitalist.
Nationalism is a major facet of this resistance identity, in the
sense of a ‘national good’, and unsectarian agenda. Mature political
forces are now trying to steer, hijack and co-opt the union, present
since the union’s inception but more pronounced and better armed
now.
Even so, the union has even rejected calls for localised
compensation for pollution caused by the oil industry for fear of coming
across as sectarian – it was Iraqi exile activists which urged union
leaders to cover this in their demands as a pre-requisite for
improvements of conditions.

Privatisation in Islam

The IFOU has a mixed political leadership including communists and

muslims. The membership is overwhelmingly Muslim and the
community of the Mosque is an essential relationship of support for the
union and a part of members’ community, and collective as well as
individual consciousnesses and conscience.

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One of the many points of agreements between the two

ideological strands of belief is a definition of privatisation and
capitalism as inherently anti-human and exploitationist. One union
leader—who has recently been ordered out of Basra by the Iraqi Oil
Minister and into a different oil company in Baghdad—explained the
following to a group of workers some years ago, as an Islamic
interpretation of privatisation:

In any production process of work, you have the following:

The human being, energy, the means of production, and
capital. In capitalism or privatisation, the pinnacle principle,
the most important goal is Capital, in second place of
importance the means of production, thirdly energy and in
the very last place - the human being. In Islam, as we know,
it is the human being that has the most value and is at the
top of all priorities.

Some interpretations of Islamic or spiritual principles, as the following

is not exclusive to Islam, value meaningful work or education as a
means of self-betterment; as a means to evolve and become a better
human being. The right to this evolution was cited in a statement of
demands against the Oil Law signed up to by all of Iraq’s unions in
2006 but which also forms a central tenet of the IFOU’s organising
principles:

Since work is the qualitative activity that sets apart the

human experience, and it is the source of all production,
wealth, and civilization, and the worker is the biggest asset
to the means of production (we honour humanity), we
demand that this law includes an explicit reference
emphasizing the role of all workers in matters of oil wealth
and investment, to protect them and build their technical
capacity, both in and outside Iraq.

Environmental protection is rooted in Islam. The Quran states that

humanity is to act as “caliph” to the rest of nature, co-existing with it
rather than dominating it, and working to preserve and maintain global
ecology. It states that humanity should make gardens instead of
working to satisfy greed.
This is not to say that the IFOU has an environmental policy or
that there have been discussion about or an understanding of the
contribution the oil industry makes to global warming and the science
behind it. Far from it. By and large, oil in Iraq is seen as liberation, an
asset which if managed properly, for the collective good, can free
Iraqis from poverty, lift up the working class, educate, house, clothe,
feed and progress generations ahead to have better lives than they
ever have, if the revenues are steered into the public sector and finally
out of the hands of dictatorship and private capitalist gain.

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Oil and the industry is a source of pride, identity, and

advancement. So how can an ecological critique of capitalism and the
oil industry evolve under these conditions of consciousness and a
culture of dependency and intertwined identity with oil? There may be
a social movement dedicated to keeping oil out of the hands of the
multinationals, but what if it simply wants to keep it pumping and
selling and fuelling catastrophic climate change only under workers
control, even under the most egalitarian, and ideally horizontal
conditions, this reliance on oil can appear as a brick wall and a death
sentence for ecology under different terms and conditions but on with
the same ecological and ultimately capitalist facts on the ground.
Or is it?

Joining the Dots After Shock

Do we dismiss social movements in this critical sector because their

interests seemingly do not cohere fundamentally with our own? I would
argue that there is a coherence, and the space, crucially, a potential of
the creation of a space for an eventual coherence and co-operation of
sorts.
Who are the “we”? The “we” is the ecological justice and anti-
capitalist movement. A movement which at times appears to be
converged in its critique of climate change as a consequence of
industrialised capitalist expansion and economic growth but in some
ways avoids it publicly or does not “join the dots” in a global
production and consumption and energy ownership sense.
Focusing on local, domestic carbon emissions, is no bad thing and
essential for motivating the personal sense of responsibility necessary
for engagement and involvement in social movements. But de-
carbonisation in the UK, necessitates a de-carbonisation of UK oil
companies, still in the top five of the FTSE 100 and responsible, in the
case of BP, for twice the annual carbon emissions of the UK domestic
energy use.
“The Carbon Web” of Oil Companies’ inter-dependent
relationships with banks, consultancies, law firms, educational and
cultural institutions and unions, spins out further than the UK, it is
global, and unravelling it and its monopolisation of energy commons,
means responding to it where it is strongest, at its front lines, and its
point of re-inforcement and also where it is at its weakest and being
challenged and contested.
Discourses on climate change have veered at times into changing
individual behaviours (aviation, personal responsibility for flying) which

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are positive in themselves but can fall short of expanding into an

enunciated public articulation of the role of aviation in economic
growth ideology. The war on Iraq opened the oil control motive in Iraq
in the public imagination. As with the enduring image of the gouged
out Canadian tar sands, the war opened up, with mine-like exposure,
the possibility for challenging government and IOC ideologies of
‘energy security’ and a fossil fuelled free-market growth for the next
30 years in this country, and debates of resource sovereignty, oil grab
and US imperialism in Iraq.
The moment of war was mined by numerous groups for political
advantage precisely because of the psychological shock it dealt to the
public imagination and the possibility for new ways of seeing that
came with it. The shock may be wearing off here, but militarised
energy security policies and their neo-liberal context are still shocking
Iraq and need re-exposure and integration into the climate change
narrative. We cannot talk about ecological justice/climate justice/just
transition without including oil producers—state and grassroots—in
energy consumption, ownership and movement.
The ecological movement has steered well clear of the struggle of
oil workers in Iraq. Which self-respecting climate change activist wants
to throw in their lot with those busy pumping the black-stuff out of the
ground? “Oil Workers” are the last workers’ taboo, along with “miners”
if we see a resurgence of the industry in the UK as planned by
government. How can one support those who want to speed up climate
change and are at the physical frontier of the raw perpetuation of it?
These are some of the questions and contradictions at play when Iraq
and oil come together. Why? Because these people are some of the
most powerful in the world. As oil is a strategic commodity, those in a
position of physically producing are also in a position to influence a
change and a shift in its’ production.
The Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions is one movement in this
strategic position and has proved itself a force that the likes of Shell,
BP, Exxon, Indian and Chinese oil companies and oil-addicted
governments of the world cannot be ignored.

Alienating Allies?

To ignore the potential in the oil workers movement as a space where

conditions to combat the growth of the oil industry at its grassroots, is
to lose hope, is to lose one of the most visceral and paradoxically
organic relationships in the production of the industry and its power
and to close the door on some of the most important people that

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ecological liberation and anti-capitalist movements need to be

engaging with.
Narratives of a just transition, debates on climate change, and
introductions of the concepts of ecological debt, of keeping oil in the
ground in return for compensation, whilst problematic alone, are
unlikely to be even be attempted or uttered in Iraq, with any impact, if
international oil companies gain control of Iraqi oil for the next 30
years. I am not arguing that these debates will happen if big oil and the
Iraqi ruling class don’t come to control Iraqi oil, nor am I arguing that
revolutionary workers control of Iraq’s oil is even likely, but our
movement is about revolutionary potential and the creation of space
and possibilities and about solidarity.

Taboo Today, Turbulence Tomorrow

Despite a close personal relationship with leaders of the Iraqi

Federation of Oil Unions, I myself have never had a debate about
climate change with them. The subject of fossil-fuel energy and climate
change and the contribution of oil to it, is a taboo. Those seeking to
tarnish the international solidarity and critiques of the oil grab agenda
have labelled activists working on the issue as cynical and self-
interested environmentalists who want to keep Iraq’s oil in the ground
with no interest in supporting Iraqis to develop. Raising these issues
now risks feeding into this narrative.
My own support work with the union was and still is based on
reinforcing their strategic position as a grassroots resistance force to
the occupation and US imperialism and the refuelling of capitalism. I
didn’t suddenly shed my ecological beliefs, and I still believe that there
is hope and a necessity to be able to speak about climate change with
workers movements at the crucial point of the production but that this
potential and power can only develop if those workers and related
popular movements have control of energy. Keeping these spaces
open demands solidarity and support.

The Fire Sometime…

The fire in Iraq is the ongoing military occupation and the corporate
and state struggle for control of Iraqi oil. Maybe if there were no
counter-forces at the grassroots fighting this fire, we would have no
space and human relationships to engage with and support, but there
are.

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Iraq is a tipping point in terms of the control and supply of energy

to imperial powers and imperialistic oil companies fading and
ascending, vying for power through strategic control of supply and the
power to re-produce and perpetuate that power.
As we read, this struggle over the last bastion of easy oil on the
planet is ongoing and the outcome undecided. If the major IOCs and
their governmental ruling class partners succeed, the space for
movements to challenge these interests will be severely restricted and
their opposition and organising on the ground in Iraq, severely
repressed. There is still everything to fight for, and it is a fight, not for
“more oil” or ”an oil industry in workers hands but still for the oil
industry” it is a fight with a long-term view and its a fight in defence of
this strategic space of resistance, energy and alliance for an ultimately
different world beyond capitalism and one of a shared sustainable
energy commons. A world where a narrative and practice of ecological
co-existence and a non-exploitative energy commons evolves as a
popular narrative of liberation.

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